Climate Change
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Abstract
This chapter considers two questions of distributive justice that arise when we face dangerous climate change. The first (the Just Target Question) concerns what balance to strike between ensuring that moral subjects are not harmed by climatic changes and ensuring that the policies required to prevent harmful climatic changes are not unduly onerous. The second (the Just Burden Question) concerns how the costs involved in combating dangerous climate change should be distributed among duty-bearers. The chapter identifies several methodological issues we need to confront to address these questions. In addition to this, it outlines how one might answer the Just Target Question, and evaluates several leading accounts of how to answer the Just Burden Question. One central finding is that the issues of justice raised by climate change cannot be treated in isolation but must be analysed as part of a more general global and intergenerational account of justice.